GRIERSON, George Abraham

GRIERSON, George Abraham. Glenageary near Dublin 7.1.1851 — Camberley, Surrey 7.3.1941. British (Irish) Indologist. Son of G. A. G., LL.D., Queen’s Printer for Ireland, and Isabella Ruxton. Educated at St. Bee’s School in Shrewsbury and at Trinity College in Dublin, studied mathematics, Hindi and Sanskrit (under Atkinson), then at Cambridge and Halle. In 1873 joined I.C.S., served in Bihar as Inspector of schools. From 1893 Additional Commissioner in Patna. From 1898 head of the Linguistic Survey of India, in 1903 retired and came to England to edit its reports. Also contributed to the New English Dictionary. Lived and died at Camberley, Surrey. Married with —> Mrs. Grierson. C.I.E. 1894, K.C.I.E. 1912, Ph.D. 1894 Halle, D.Litt. 1902 Trinity College, Dublin.

GAG was a many-sided and much esteemed philologist, one of the pioneers of NIA philology and linguistics. Also a folklorist and ethnologist, whose Bihar Peasant Life is a classic. In addition to his early Bihari, his special interests included Kashmiri, Dardic, Romani, and MIA (Prakrit). His main work was of course the L.S.I. For non-Indo-Aryan languages in the L.S.I. he had assistants (Konow). Worked until very advanced age. He was active in the founding of S.O.A.S. and acted as its Director 1917-25.

– An Introduction to the Maithili Language. JASB Extra No. Calcutta 1880; A Handbook to the Kayathí Character. Calcutta 1881, 2nd ed. A H. to the Kaithí Ch. Calc. 1899; Seven Grammars of the Dialects and Subdialects of the Bihari Language, spoken in the Province of Bihar, in the Eastern Portion of the North-Western Provinces. 8 parts, 816 p. Calcutta 1883-87.

– The Lay of Alha. A Saga of Rajput Chivalry as sung by Minstrels of Northern India. Partly translated in English Ballad Metre by the late W. Waterfield. With an Introd. and abstracts of the untranslated portions. 278 p. Oxford 1923.